Nearly nine years after Hurricane Katrina flooded huge swaths of the city, Slidell government is compiling an extensive list of Katrina-related problems that officials hope FEMA will cover. City officials and a consultant working for the city say FEMA has so far agreed to pay for $6.7 million in street repairs.

But, one city official cautions it might take years before the list -- and any accompanying work financed by the federal agency -- is complete.

"There is no deadline,'' said Tim Mathison, chief administrative officer for Slidell Mayor Freddy Drennan. "If I've learned one thing in this job, I've learned you have to be patient.''

Katrina devastated south Louisiana and Mississippi in August 2005, and in the immediate years after the hurricane Slidell government's emphasis was on repairing and rebuilding city-owned buildings, Mathison said. When Drennan became mayor in July 2008, he began pushing to make repairs to city infrastructure -- water, sewer, drainage and streets -- that the city said had been compromised by the hurricane.

But while FEMA has signed off on $6.7 million for street repairs, Slidell residents shouldn't look for a landslide of road construction any time soon. The city and its consultant, Stuart Consulting Group, are in the process of surveying damage in other areas -- sewer and water lines and drainage -- that FEMA might help repair.

The city will wait to begin street and road repairs until finding out about possible work that has to take place beneath the surface on water and sewer lines. FEMA will only pay to fix the streets once, so repairing them now and then having to possibly tear them up later doesn't make financial sense, Mathison and Steve Nelson of Stuart Consulting said.

"Plus, we don't want to put the citizens through that inconvenience,'' Mathison said.

Word that FEMA has approved $6.7 million in road work, with possibly more to come, is welcome news to city officials who have been wrestling in recent years with how to cover the potentially massive infrastructure bills that eventually will come due. The roadwork is a drop in the bucket of perhaps as much as $60 million in work that will be needed to fix crumbling water and sewerage lines, city officials say.

Part of the problem, they say, is the age of the lines -- in many cases they are made of terra cotta and have reached the end of their lifespan. But city officials also think the effects of Katrina -- the weight of the floodwaters followed by the heavy equipment used in the hurricane cleanup -- greatly exacerbated the problem.

So porous are some of the old sewer lines that water from heavy rains flows into them, inundating the city's treatment plants and causing sewage backups, city Public Operations Director Mike Noto said.

Teams from the city and Stuart have been probing the sewer and water lines in the three drainage basins hardest hit by Katrina -- Dellwood, Schneider Canal and Bayou Bonfouca -- and will ask FEMA to finance the repairs.

"The streets are the easier to quantify,'' Nelson said. "You can walk down a street and see the damage. ''

The underground pipes require additional study, he said, including using closed circuit television probes.

While the $60 million figure is an estimate city officials often toss around, how much work will be needed remains a guess for now. And how much FEMA will cover also remains unknown, although city officials say their relationship with the federal agency is strong.

"Thus far they've been very willing to work with us,'' Nelson said.

"Our relationship with FEMA is much better,'' Mathison added. "They know we're just asking for repairs for damage during Katrina.''